Today I am joined by Ben Pyle, founder of the Climate Debate UK
and also cabinet member on Together Association.
And well, you are a climate researcher, let's say, and have
recently published a paper called Clean Air, Dirty Money
and Filthy Politics. Welcome to the programme, Ben.
Thanks very much, Mike. It's great to be here.
Let's get started. I mean the the title of the of
the paper is pretty clear because dirty money and filthy
politics seems to be the situation that we're in at the
moment. And and what struck me about the
paper as I read it was you're you're talking about so many of
the the things that that we have been covering over many, many
years, C40 cities and so on. The whole city's agenda and the
fact that cities are are absolutely leading the way in
terms of pursuing climate, the climate agenda, the debt zero
agenda, and they're using increasingly clean air as the
mechanism to sort of drive that in the first place.
That's right. Yeah, we look at that, we think
of that as like kind of a pretty much a symptom of the failure of
the green agenda so far in fact. So we we produced another report
earlier on in the year looking at the science of air pollution
claims such as Sadiq Khan's claim that 4000 people die from
air pollution in in London each year which is just nonsense and
and actually you can find scientists being very frank
about the fact that this is nonsense and and even you know
through through sort of committees that the government
have convened and actually the chair of that committee is is
also the chair of Imperial College the the the the the body
at the Imperial College London that sort of now services Sadiq
Khan's claims with science so-called.
But it's it's not peer reviewed science and it's not it's not
scientific even it's just statistical modelling.
But anyway, the point is what? Why?
What we wanted to know really was well, why does this persist?
Why do these kind of claims persist throughout public life
through through politics? Why?
Why politics?
So sort of reluctant to accept that you know challenges to this
view and sort of listen to to the critics of of of those
claims. And I I think pretty I mean you
know I I don't know if this report's going to tell anyone
who watch you know watches this kind of show anything they
didn't necessarily already know. But we did think it was
important to sort of make it in a formal to to create a very
sort of formal argument about how this new form of politics
works, what the kind of structures are and and and who
what's dominant in it. Because it's clearly not
democratic, right. You know, it's clearly not the
case that people are or ever were marching in the street
demanding tighter air pollution controls and demanding that the
government takes away their cars and and and restricts their
access to roads. So.
So where where does it come from?
And you know, we discover, well, we didn't discover, we we
already knew. But we we, we, we show that the
philanthropists have this undue role, this outsized role in
global politics and pretty much in the case of some very big
players like Bill Gates of course, and Mike Bloomberg,
arguably they've just bought their way in now.
It's fine in a sense, I think, to to argue that civil society
organisations and to a greater or lesser or extent sort of some
intergovernmental agencies might require philanthropy to to to
survive, especially in the case of charities.
But we point out that it's more the case that billionaires are
able to buy civil society, not just civil society
organisations. What we're doing here now is
civil society but but we're we're against.
We're against the dominant part of civil society which doesn't
have any real connection with the public.
It's all, it's all top down. It's all from these very lofty
philanthropic organisations that just sort of set things up.
They can just, you know conjure up organisations to suit their
needs as they arise. And so that's that's kind of a
departure from how we might have once understood politics.
Democratic politics in this country is mostly organised
around a contest of ideas between broadly competing
parties representing different interests in society.
Let's look at this in a little bit more detail because you've
talked about philanthropists and you've talked about civil
society organisations, which we might call charities.
NGOs are another aspect of this but and then on top of that as
well there are for example C40 Cities UK 100, a whole bunch of
other it's a global Parliament of Mayors a whole bunch of other
organizations and institutions which have been established and
have really gained a lot of traction in the last 20 or 30
years which are completely outside the what people would
perceive as being the normal democratic process.
The majority of people probably don't even know they exist.
I mean if we took a straw poll of of people in the UK and said
you know have you heard of the global parliament of Mayors.
Very very few people will have heard of that or know anything
about it. And so this is all going on in
plain sight and and us as as as the electorate, as as people
that think we live in a democracy have played no part in
the establishment of these organisations and played no part
in in holding them to account. So.
So how has this happened and how has this crept up on us and what
do you think the steps are that we need to take to to to deal
with it? Well, I think there are a number
of hypothesis about the genesis of this kind of what would you
call it, philanthropic industrial complex.
You know, and I think Vivek Ramaswamy's book, I think it's
called Woke Inc, does shed some light on that.
Perhaps being a system that kind of developed under Obama whereby
there was, I believe tax breaks or some such thing for
philanthropic gestures. And.
And that pushed a lot of money into causes that were, you know,
more or less aligned with the Democratic Party's sort of
consensus or ideological priorities, what have you.
So I think, I think that was probably the shot in the arm
over the last sort of one of the Obama era and since.
But this is a this is a longer thing and and and you know
people what would you say veterans of the climate wars I
suppose you would say have known that this has been going on
since the 19 sort of 60s that very powerful people very rich
people have variously or you know, not not all of them by any
stretch of the imagination but a nucleus of them certainly began
to sort of believe in the 1960s in this Malthusian principle and
and and to try and reinvent the work of Thomas Malthus that that
was sort of aimed to restrict the human fertility.
They spent billions on trying to reduce population in in the
developing world. So they're kind of gripped by
this idea and they were very they were able to set themselves
up through the United Nations through the you know this this
was an oil tycoon, Maurice Strong and that really
established environmentalism in the UN and and and that the
United Nations Environment Programme very much led by
Strong and and his you know fellow philanthropists.
These billionaires like the Rockefellers and and it's kind
of snowballed since then and I I think it's it's very global
politics is very attractive to national politics so so you know
someone like we are our favorite demon Tony Blair he he's much
more drawn to the glamour and the and what have you of of a
global institution of these enormous sort of political
structures rather than just the sort of slightly boring
day-to-day stuff that characterises domestic UK
politics. So you know, so there's been
attempt to rebuild to to to sort of build political institutions
at the global level going on since the foundations of the
United Nations here. It's the first days or even
before if you take the League of Nations as representative of the
same same effort. It's always been a dream of of
of global government for for good and bad reasons and and
that that a lot of people have invested their philanthropy in
it and their and their hopes for for a different form of politics
the the one we're we're sort of used to.
So I think these these kind of things coincide and or align and
so so the, you know, the United Nations cannot be a can't be
dominated by a form of politics for example, that characterises
the ideologies of the early early 20th century.
You know, if it's left wing or right wing as such then then
then there's going, you know, the the, the, the, the, the
political project is not going to be able to sustain itself
because it will obviously rub against democratic principles
where people choose that, what kind of ideologies that their
governments or what the organising principles of the
governments are. So the United Nations has to
sort of it sort of present itself as above ideology and and
people for some reason have have sort of come to believe that
environmentalism isn't ideological.
That this idea about how society must be organised in order to
save the planet is just a technical matter, not a matter
of of you know of of ideologies such as those that characterize
that you know the the early 20th century.
But it is right. It is just as ideological
because it says we must be organised in this way.
The whole of society, the whole of the economy must be radically
reorganised in short order. And then of course it just so
happens that the people who benefit from that are global
technocrats are billionaires and and and you know that's how they
can their their interests are going to be served in in this in
this sort of green utopia that they designed for us.
None of them. They're not going to you know
they're not going to they're not going to be losers in this this
in in the green utopia. So I I mean there's so those are
the two main strands is you know this development of the United
Nations and the development of philanthropy as a sort of a
political force in and of its own right, probably probably the
more recent part of that. Yes.
And I mean, you know, an example of what you're talking about is
Mr. Starmer himself, when he was asked whether he prefers
Parliament or the World Economic Forum and the answer was the
World Economic Forum, that was sort of my next question.
I mean, you know, we've talked about NGOCSOS, we've talked
about bodies like C40 cities and and Global Parliament of Mayors
and so on. But where do you see bodies like
the World Economic Forum or the Bilderberg Group or the CFR?
These types of organisations fitting into all this, are they
just part of the puzzle or or do they have a bigger role?
Or in fact, following on from that, do you think the role of
the World Economic Forum is overstated?
I do and that tends to annoy people.
But I don't. I I don't, I don't want to think
of it as a as a sort of yes, no true false kind of kind of
thing. There are there are dozens of or
at least a dozen organisations like the WEF and the the
Bloomberg Bilderberg and and I think they've got an interest in
overstating their ability to influence things and and so you
know when I was writing the report on air pollution for
example it doesn't really come up in the machinations like and
of course you know there are there are WEF meetings and what
have you about air pollution and and climate change but I don't.
I don't I don't necessarily see them as the instigators.
So I, I, I, I don't want to give them too much credit for what
they don't. They don't.
They haven't. They don't necessarily deserve
and haven't necessarily created. The way I look at them is more
like unsupervised sixth form discos preceding an outbreak of
chlamydia. If you can compare ideology to
an STD. All these people they just move
around in these kind of conferences and and and meetings
and boondoggles and Beanos and what have you and and it rubs
off on each other. They, they, they, they align
through this kind of quite bland, insidious process that
doesn't take away the evil of it.
Like this is not how where decisions and ideologies should
be made like that like the democratic well decision making
should be democratic. It should be we should be able
to participate in that And of course these exclusive clubs are
are exactly that. They're going to say no public
allowed no no people allowed. So so to to to bring that back
to the report it it seems to me that that you know with with
figures like Bill Gates pushing sums like $4.7 billion into
organisations like the World Health Organization funding UK
universities to the tune of 300 plus $1,000,000 each.
That's not a year that's that's in total.
But you know they're giving they're giving vast budgets to
research in in the UK and and and throughout the world and
they're dominating civil society just these you know just the few
the handful of billionaires that we look at Bill Gates.
Mike Bloomberg Christopher Hohn Jeremy Grantham you you know the
the the WEF that I mean those those are sums that are far
bigger than the WEF and they they encompass much more of
society than you know just Davos Mann who who used to be by the
way I mean he's just an object of ridicule.
In the 2000 tens Davos man was quite this quite naff figure who
who you know sort of burdened by the latest gadgets gizmos and
fashionable you know fashionable causes.
He wasn't a serious person. He sort of he he he he he you
know it's a bit of a bit of a spiv really and not not not
someone who is capable of executing you know world plan.
And and I think we should actually perhaps even look at
the these billionaires in the same way and it's not
necessarily the case that you know like the the guy in The
Simpsons, the evil the evil power station guy.
They've got this this program. Yeah.
That's right. Yeah.
So so like kind of it's almost a civil society has been
established to just completely flatter the egos of these
already very narcissistic and psychopathic people.
So so they they may themselves be victims of ideology.
It's not necessarily like scripts and plans and you know
and what and what have you it's the the if you like the
abomination is just in the configuration of politics in
this way not necessarily the the documents that that that reveal
what their agenda is And I appreciate that's nuanced and
and some people might say well what difference does that make
to me you know but but but that I mean but that but that
certainly works both ways I don't I don't think that that
that billionaires should be able to give gifts with strings to
intergovernmental agencies and civil society organizations with
such influence in in in public life.
So I don't I don't need the WEF or the Bilderbergs or to to
explain that position. I just need to say I don't I
don't want this I don't like their ideas I think they're
wrong. I think they distort science
research across the board. They distort not just not just
scientific research, they excuse me, they distort social and
Economic Research and and all kinds.
You know they form cabals and that's one of the things we
pointed out in the report. Even 20 years ago, researchers
into malaria and other transmissible diseases
particularly those that affect the the world.
They were complaining that philanthropies, specifically
from Gates, has this toxic effect on research.
It it, it distorts the priorities of research and
replaces them with the agenda of the philanthropist.
So you know and and we know he's got his Gates for example is is
preoccupied with vaccines. Well we well that malaria was
eliminated in much of the West in in in in Europe and in
America in North America and even as far north as the Arctic
Circle not through vaccines. You know we had we we we people
went out with a lot of pesticide and and and where there were
malaria mosquitoes they were wiped out.
Now that that that may or may not have ecological problems but
that was that was the approach we took or or the OR or you know
sort of forward thinking. In fact governments and
regulators took in order to address a very serious problem
that you know that would not be tolerated today.
And and you can be sure that if something of that order did
return today, people would be pretty pretty quickly demanding
that kind of solution. So, so, so that that begins to
shift the, you know, this philanthropy shifts the centre
of gravity of those discussions and and and scientific research
in institutions where strings should not be attached.
We want scientists to pursue what is of interest to
scientists and we want social researchers similarly to be
independent of these ideological agendas.
That doesn't mean that they don't have their own ideological
genders or are not vulnerable to them, but that that the point of
science is to reconcile. Those kind of differences in
society. So yeah so probably probably a
long winded sale. I just think, I just think this
kind of dominance of philanthropy is unhealthy and
and I think we can start there more simply than we can with
with other sort of forms of criticism about wax and and so
on. If philanthropists were really
charitable, they would just give the money to whoever they
suggested, as everybody else does.
They would give the money to whoever they think it's doing a
good job and that would be it. But as you say, conditionalities
are attached and therefore there is an agenda at work here.
But, but if we just look at the funding for scientific research
at the moment, you've mentioned Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation. But I mean, who else is, is
directly funding this type of research in terms of clean air
and climate policy? Just on those specifics.
Well, well, I mean, the, the point of the research is we we
sort of try and demonstrate 3 tiers to this because we were,
because it was necessary to sort of explain the context of what
we were talking about. So at the top we point out there
is the likes of Bill Gates and he spent an enormous amount of
money over over the course of the, the development of the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation. I think it's in the order of $85
billion but I I don't have the the figures in in front of me
and and he is he's kind of I argue that that that's quite
simply buying his way into these intergovernmental agencies and
so on and so forth. That's as I explained then
there's a second tier which is some more the green billionaires
and they're kind of beginning to buy their their way in in the
same way. And the three that we look at
there are Mike Bloomberg, the media news media guy and the
owner of the developer of the Bloomberg Terminal, which sort
of transmits financial information extremely rapidly
around the world. And Christopher Hohn who's the
UK billionaire hedge fund manager and and Jeremy Grantham
who who's most, I mean he's he's a bit of a smaller deal but he
he's interesting because he he funds very expensive units
bearing his name at the London School of Economics and Imperial
College and I think he's given those in the order of about 30
million of some denomination each.
So, and then the the third tier is is just showing how the air
pollution is a proxy battle of the climate war.
So in fact it's just those, you know, money from climate
philanthropists that is is is making its way to the air
pollution campaigns. So you know, and the 2nd tier is
is developing along the same lines as as the first tier and
and the air pollution anxieties are just the annex of the
climate wars, right? Something I wanted to ask you
specifically about here was and if if if misread this in the in
the report then then say so. But if we look at for example
the Foreign Commonwealth Office and the way that they distribute
money around the world, they are off.
They they up to a point we're publishing all spending over
25,000 lbs And they would send money to a particular
organization but then that that organization would then
distribute that money further down the chain.
And So what what effectively was happening was that the money was
being laundered so that you never knew that it was actually
that a particular NGO that was working in the country was
actually being funded by the the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
via these other intermediaries. And.
And I was just wondering whether I think I read that in in the
report that's kind of the same model that's being used in this
case as well? Yeah, yeah, possibly.
We looked less than that than I would have liked to have done.
It needs more more more work. We only have we've got
incredibly limited resources you know not not being funded by
billionaires. So I was you know only able to
take a few weeks to to to do this The the the the dev tracker
info that the the the foreign and Commonwealth Office do put
out is really interesting and it was very I've I've I've seen it
quite a lot sort of leveraging quite a lot of money the the
billionaires money they seem to amplify their money through
through government largesse. Yeah.
So yeah you could find at the foreign Commonwealth Office
donations to the World Wildlife Fund of 30,000,000 lbs and then
and you can find the the you know their their funding.
The most bizarre I found which we we discuss is this
organization called client Earth which which you know uses
judicial reviews takes governments and companies to
courts to try and advance the the the green agenda.
The government's given them 40 sorry 4,000,000 lbs so far that
we've found and and yet they have taken the government to
court 9 times at least nine times on the issue of air
pollution. I think that that that was by
2019 and I think there have been a number of cases since, which
is just absolutely, I mean, who's heard of a, a, a a a a
plaintiff being funded by a defendant in a in a in a lawsuit
that that's kind of crazy, isn't it?
Like kind of I'm, I'm paying you to sue me yet that is what that
is. That's that's the situation.
That's absurdity of of the situation we're in.
Of course, Client Earth is not solely funded by by the
government. It's funded by mostly the the
billionaires we've discussed. And I think even Pink Floyd's
guitarist Dave Gilmore, he he gave them about 16,000,000 quid,
I believe. So that, you know, they're
pretty, they're pretty bloated already with billionaire, green,
billionaire cash. So why the green?
The UK government is funding them.
I have no idea but that but that.
But that perversity in in funding you know these legal
campaigns is reflected in in in a lot of the funding that you
can see from green organization to to green organisations from
the government. So.
So it's it's all I I think to more towards the end of the
report and and it's something I've argued elsewhere as well
there there is something of a compact developing between
business government and civil society And given that civil
society is just a a a you know product you know just a just
bought owned by business. We can say it's a compact
between governments and business or governments and billionaires
if we want to go that that far and that's the danger.
And you you you hear the likes of you know former president of
COP 26 Alok Sharma, MP for reading W You know he was this
sort of slightly pathetic figure given this sort of huge planet
saving role and he gives this fascinating speech to the Green
Alliance. You know his his BLOB outfit in
Westminster quite quite an old one but a BLOB outfit all the
same and and we're in in you know he uses the word civil
society in this sort of presentation about you know what
what what what about COP 26 and the plans he uses the word the
expression of civil society like more than 10 or so times.
He never talks about the public right So the the the the public
just don't feature in in the thinking of these kind of wonks
these technocrats these the the the the people that sort of
inhabit the foreign the the the the foreign and Commonwealth in
development Office. They they just do think of the
whole of the world in in terms of of civil society
organisations and and the great and good that they can do
leaving out any any you know questions about what what
whether the public agrees with what these vast budgets.
This is billions. This is 2% of GDP, which, well
it was, which is what what Cameron wanted to use as the as
the aid budget. And I think that this is the the
trick of this is, you know Cameron will say we want to use
2% of GDP to as as aid and everyone will think of starving
babies in Africa and we're going to go and give them some food.
We might build them some houses, we might restore their
agricultural land so they can use it.
No, it's going to you know, this kind of questionable university
research departments and and civil society organisations and
other intergovernmental agencies and so on to try and further
this green agenda globally. So.
So for example you you you look at you know some some W African
country that may be the putative beneficiary of £5,000,000 and
and then you discover well it's it's it's half of that's going
to the World Resources Institute and half of that's going to
which is just like a stern you know Nicholas Stern outfit with
with Jeremy Grantham's influence and so on and so forth.
And and then you know there might be a few regional NGOs
that take a few of the crumbs but but what the the the point
of this project is to help somewhere like Ethiopia develop
its national nationally determined contributions to the
Paris agreement or under the Paris agreement.
So, so it's this is this looks like a this looks like going to
help hungry Africans. But actually it's just it's just
strengthening the Paris agreement.
It's buying and bribing officials in other countries to
to adhere to the UK government's preferred global political
institutions and and treaties and so on and so forth.
So, so none of that gets discussed and I I've done a few
dives on on on on those funds because I remember there's
probably a distraction from the air pollution discussion.
But you know a few months ago aid to India became a big thing
because India just put a spacecraft on on the moon, which
is which is great. And then people were saying hold
on, we're spending all these these millions on aid in India
and and then if you go and look at what the money is actually
going towards, it's stuff like creating apps to help people.
So so there there was a a few £1,000,000 that went to software
developers in in India to develop apps for people's
smartphones so that they could live sustainable you know they
could have sustainable lifestyle tips or what have you completely
daft and and and they they you know I I think what that's
trying to do is is is to buy a part of Indian society to you
know to to try and change values in in there so that people so
there's you know 2 or 300 people in India now who are sort of who
have got buy in to Western environmental ideological
precepts and that's how this this this stuff is intended to
work and and but but you won't you won't hear that kind of
thing discussed in mainstream discussions about aid They'll
they'll go back you know it's on the BBC they'll be talking about
the devastating floods or famines or what have you that
people elsewhere have to deal with.
So yeah, so it's it's a great big scam.
This is all the same policy being expressed in in many ways.
Now the question I had for you was therefore politicians are
not representing our wishes, they're not representing us in
any way, they're representing policies to us, it seems to me.
And therefore, you know all the at best all we have is a veneer
of democracy here. It's a non democracy here you
can a management style and that and that.
The only contest that really exists between, for example,
Keir Starmer and Rishi Sonak is a is a fake debate about who's
competent to to run the state. It's not about anything deeper
about any of the principles, the organising principles at stake.
You know there aren't. There are none because they're
just too they're just too well, everyone knows their puppets.
Even even people who would vote Labour or or or Tory know that
Rishi Sanak doesn't represent them and and Keir Starmer
doesn't they. They know, they know that.
I think the best thing in the world that could happen would be
if both Tories and Labour and the others got together and said
we won't vote for our party, if you don't vote for your party,
because we both know that they're completely corrupted.
Labour doesn't represent the working class and Conservatives
don't represent the traditional values that that that that party
used to stand for And Liberal Democrats of course are neither
liberal nor democratic and there's a question mark over
whether the Green Party are actually Green.
So so like the the that that being the case they've they've
all sort of arrived at a consensus position on on these
issues and what we show in the report is it's the IT was a
consensus that was engineered by the Green Alliance which is that
I I mentioned them a few moments ago this sort of think tank very
very rooted in western. It's not massive.
It doesn't have you know budgets of 10s of millions or anything
but it. But it has a lot of influence in
in in Westminster and they were behind the instigating the the
the climate assembly that sort of big experiment with against
democracy a few years ago that that that sort of coincided with
the arrival of extinction rebellion and you know that so
they're they they organised this campaign in the in the 2015
general election. I think it's called Show the
Love and and they, they basically lobbied the leaders of
the parties, the three main parties, David Cameron, of
course, Ed Miliband, who was Labour leader at the time, and
Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats.
And there's this picture of them all signing this pledge not to
debate climate policy but to all agree to to sort of emphasise
the Paris agreement and and and tackling climate change in their
policy genders. So so you know sort of agreement
to put the green BLOB before the interests of the of the public
and then to allow the public a view and and I think people
would recognise that not just in climate change now but across
the board. It's really difficult for I can
only really go on about climate change but I think people you
know recognise that that that woke has established itself in
in the political establishment at large not necessarily just
the just in Westminster. In along the same lines a racial
ideology, gender, geology, all of the and and and greener
geologies and they're all pretty much a piece and they've all
sort of set themselves in in Westminster in this kind of way
and and and at the expense of us participating in politics and
deciding what principles should should be key to to policy
making. I mean, I don't want to return
to the 1970s, for example, when you had, you know, these these
horrible disputes between labour and, as it were capital or
labour, you know, between we don't want strikes again, right?
But, but but we do want there to be a dialogue of some kind
between between differing perspectives to society.
Otherwise those differences in society are going to fester and
they're going to be dangerous that that those schisms are
going to become dangerous. That's why we have democracy is
because it's the it's the it's the best way of resolving
tensions that develop within society.
But if you've got a whole political establishment which is
very easily bought into these sort of fluffy consensuses that
have a billions of pounds of PR surrounding them, well, well,
well, what? What's going to happen?
And I think it's really important to remember that as
these politicians were trying to build the consensus around
climate change. We were going into a referendum
where where really the the the the the the public had been
denied this this this this view for a really long time.
Have been denied the ability to give a view on on on Britain's
membership of the European Union for for such a long time.
And that had grown and grown and grown until it was a such a
problem for David Cameron that he was forced to give people a
consensus. And then they and then the the
they threw the whole resources of the state behind trying to
sort of nudge people into making the right choice.
So, so, so, like, there couldn't be a more vivid demonstration
about the difference between, you know, the the democratic
deficit. Everyone in the everyone.
Well, not everyone, of course, because it didn't didn't turn
into a it wasn't 100%. But but the the largest, the
largest sort of the, the dominant issue as far as the
public were concerned for the preceding 15 or 20 years was the
question of Britain's membership of the EU.
Whereas the dominant question as far as Westminster was concerned
was what happens if it gets 2° warmer, right.
That's just this. So people were saying we want
democratic control of policy because there's all this stuff
that's going on that's terrible. We've got this growing
immigration problem. We've got this growing house
housing problem and we've got all these economic problems that
haven't been resolved and and and you're all dancing around in
Europe worrying about climate change.
We need to bring we need to bring politics back with to back
to democracy and and and you know the the likes of Ed
Miliband wandering around with their heads in the clouds on on
the global stage just didn't recognise that still don't
recognise that democratic deficit that's something that
needs to be resolved so that that's kind of an important
that's an important. Aspect to understanding how air
pollution fears and crises develop.
This is their context, right? This is it's it's from it's this
democratic deficit that that creates this kind of distorted
view on the other side that that the likes of Ed Miliband and and
other politicians are are victims of and and what what?
So what we really point out in in that part of the report is
that global climate politics it kind of comes to a halt in 2015
with the Paris Agreement and perhaps knocked a bit for six as
well by Britain's Britain's vote, you know the the Leave
vote and also by Donald Trump's election.
Right. These are two kind of
earthquakes that unsettled global you know globalists if
you like in their in their ideologies.
And so there's a recognition that global, the Paris agreement
essentially allows everyone to set their own emissions targets.
Whereas in the past the hope was you could get one-size-fits-all.
Everyone agree it's such an emergency.
We all have to impose this this this one policy now and then and
and and then every country has to deal with it because now it's
it's it's this sort of fake agreement to to so it's an
agreement to disagree basically. And so politics, climate
politics has to shift. It has to go somewhere else and
where it goes is is local. Because if you.
I mean as as we've seen now, there's a lot of fallout about
Rishi Sanak's plans to abolish he.
Well, he he says he'd put back the deadline for abolishing
petrol and diesel cars to 2035 to bring it into alignment with
other countries. This is, this is enormously
politically toxic for national governments.
So, so national. So climate policies don't work
at the global level. They don't really work at the
national level. So, so they've been trying to
find ways to push climate policy making to local politics where
of course turnouts are extremely low.
You know, and I I don't think any London mayor for example,
has ever had a turn out at the election of more than 45%.
And of course they're not. They're they're they're getting
barely more than half of that total vote in the in the second
round. So you know, they can't really
claim that very many Londoners support, support any mayor that
there's ever been. I think what what I think people
have pointed out, more people voted Brexit in London than
voted for Sadiq Khan, which is this remarkable disparity given
the ambition to that that that Khan has to abolish everyone's
cars anyway. So so giving powers as it were
to local authorities essentially to exceed what people would
believe to be local authorities powers is where the the climate
agenda has ended up and and so you know banning cars is is done
on the basis of air pollution at the local level not on the level
not not as climate change at the national or global level and and
you and and and it's done in the context of extremely weak
democratic engagement. You know, I've given an example
of London but in many local elections throughout the UK you
know the the turnouts are as low as the low teens.
So so you know and and that's for you know for for for all
parties. So you could, you know there
there could, there could be a a council that has just, you know,
just the support that a mandate given to it by by single digit
percentage of the local population.
Yet what they want to do is extremely radical even even by
national government standards. So, so they, you know, is a is a
huge change to the way we live our lives and you know,
radically changes the informal social care that goes on.
It radically changes the opportunities that you can give
children and it radically it changes how you get to work and
so on and so forth. But that is now.
That is the competence that's been assumed by local
governments and what what we So what I found fascinating about
this because we were saying well what's that got to do with
billionaires like Mike Bloomberg.
Well Mike Bloomberg was mayor for three terms of New York City
and we I've been talking about turnouts and and the the turn
out in in New York was catastrophically low I think in
I think it's got 25% and in so in in in his third term in
office Bloomberg spent for every single vote that he achieved
$186 which is I mean he he he spent more on a on a you know on
on his mayoral election than all UK political parties spend on on
on an on a general election campaign And for a city the size
of London for a job like city comes I mean it's just an
extraordinary amount of money. So my suggestion is this
indicates that local government, not just in the states, we've
got the same problems here, are completely vulnerable to money
and they're completely vulnerable to to these fake
civil society organisations and and and so being completely open
to to the power of money, that was the obvious place for
climate politics to go from global to to to to local.
And and Mike Bloomberg has seen it.
And if you look at Mike Bloomberg's presence at COP 28,
which is happening now, he's he's running this strand on
local politics. He's running the show, literally
running the show and discussing how they can further buy their
way in to local politics to essentially circumvent democracy
at national and local levels. But in case that sounds gloomy,
because local elections are so have such low turnouts, we have
huge opportunity here to organise independent campaigns
to stand against those candidates that are so
vulnerable to the green BLOB and so so that you know, we we, we
can overturn this and that. That's why you know citizen
journalism and organisations and and campaigns like together
that's so important to to to help that process.
Well, absolutely. And of course, you know, people
will be often pessimistic about local politics and getting
involved in local politics. But it's a great way to get a
message to to an audience without requiring the mainstream
media. And that's really what I want to
ask you about next, because obviously none of this could
happen if the media was doing its job and was actually helping
to hold politics at whatever form of politics it is to
account. And contrary to that, they have
demonstrated in the last 1020 years to be absolutely on board
with with policy rather than holding policy to account.
So I just wondering what you think about mainstream media?
Oh, well, I try not to. I mean, I don't.
I don't. I mean, I could.
I mean, actually, I say I don't. I try not to.
I just, I mean I I I used to just turn it used to be tuned on
to my radio with my my radio used to be radio four in the
kitchen and I just. I mean it's something I listen
to from my you know from my childhood into run into my 30s,
the BBC. And I just don't recognise it
first of all like kind of. I just don't you?
I mean, of course there were always sort of leftoids and
ideologues and what have you at the BBC and that's that.
But that was all added to the richness of the experience, I
think. And I turn it on that and I
just, I just couldn't. I couldn't.
You know, maybe I'm just standing like a grumpy old man.
Yeah, I didn't recognise the Britain that they were
portraying. I didn't recognise any of the
issues that they were they were claiming were sort of dark,
ought to be dominant and the and the same with the.
I mean the the the TVI probably switched off many years earlier,
although I I used to remember thinking Channel 4 was really
amazing. Ben Channel 4 used to be in
terms of mainstream media news Channel 4 News used to be pretty
much top line and if you remember back in 2000 and nine
2010 they exposed the swine flu scam that was trying to be
pushed on on the on the world at that time and and then go
forward 10 years and they were absolutely 100% behind the COVID
narrative as well. So.
So you know they that something changed there but I wasn't even
you know BBC and and and broadcast news that's one thing
but also we've got still got the newspapers and of course the
Guardian in particular have been on the receiving end of quite a
lot of the philanthropic money that you were talking about
earlier in the in this interview so.
So there there is definitely influence coming through from
the same kinds of sources that are influencing academia and
politics. Yeah.
So the other change that happened of course over the
COVID period is they started being directly funded by
government for advertising in a way that they hadn't been up to
that point as well. So, So you know, I I just wonder
how much of that is, is the reason that they are refusing to
actually engage in these topics? Again, the sums are pretty large
and that's only the ones we've been able to to uncover.
A lot of money going from Bill Gates to to the B, the World
Service end of the BBC, not necessarily the licence fee
funded part of the BBC. And I think the BBC.
And there's some very interesting documents around
Again around the around 2016 from from the BB, CS Charter,
Balaam, BBC Media Action, which feeds into a lot of BBC World
Service programming, which in turn gets pushed out variously
across the network. So the BB, CS Fact Checking unit
is funded through this stuff. It's also quite a beneficiary of
quite a generous grant from central government as well,
which has the same preoccupations.
But around 2016 is when all of this panic about misinformation
begins and and you know this the the, the, the fake news stuff.
And I think it's because the BBC you know being the the main
instrument of the political establishment at large I would
say not necessarily the government or the state you know
but the but the the the the political class it's sort of
represents it's most prominent sort of institution is is of
course the BBC and and and it's terrified you know if you if you
read these kind of discussions in the in in the BBC that about
what's just happened. Trump's just been elected
Brexit's just just been voted for and and they're like Oh my
gosh what what have we what have we allowed to happen.
We were supposed to be the centre of gravity of everyone's
opinion in the whole UK we national agenda.
We were supposed to be presenting to people the view of
the world and and they they feel like they failed so they kind of
doubled down and and and I think I think the the other
broadcasters and a lot of the rest of the media were in their
orbit but I think they've doubled down too hard so and I
and I think that that you know so we we might see these quite
large sums going like you know in the order of $50 million
going from Bill Gates to the BBC 12 million I think to the
Guardian and even some to the Telegraph.
But it's not, it's not what it's not going to work now because
that there's a disjuncture now and and too many people have
read it and too many people have seen it.
So now people are just switching off the BBC precisely because
it's just become this bland conformism that doesn't, it
doesn't explore any issue to any depth and you know that as as
much someone say, who could say, oh, you just got this view
that's an outlier that's out of kilter, that that's much more
interesting to people than sort of authorised consensuses about,
you know, the the, the, the, the, the correct scientific
opinion. People, people want to hear
about debates, people want to hear about, you know,
differences of perspective and people, people don't want to be
spoon fed bland piety through their TV so now that's why
they're switching off. But none of the the broadcasters
recognise it. I think Channel 4 just blew
£5,000,000 on I on on sort of reinventing their logo and
making films about how they did it, but then that that just
leaves £5,000,000 they're not spending on the content.
They're all logo and no products, right?
But they're not they're not interesting enough for logo to
stick on people's T-shirts or something.
So. So, you know, they're they're,
they've become in in this kind of way preoccupied with
themselves as brands and sort of their relationship to society at
the expense of actually serving any good in society.
So I think people, people have, people have turned off.
So again, I wouldn't be too bleak about the dominance of
mainstream media because this I know, you know, apart from
anything else, we're here now, we're doing this now.
This probably wasn't possible to the extent that there it is now,
before COVID and before Climate, before before Net zero and
before Wokeness. So every every kind of trench
that the the, the, the, that that establishment position digs
as its own kind of defences undermines its own foundations.
People don't want people want stuff like this and the more
people that can sort of find it the more the more they will
watch And the more that the BBC and Channel 4 and the mainstream
newspapers are defensive about it.
The more the more they will drive people away.
That that that's that's been the the tendency so long, long may
they continue. But that that is also why
they're getting very aggressive about online harms and
misinformation and other stuff. So we have to be careful.
It's not. It's not a done deal.
There's a lot more they could do to to to prevent freedom of
expression and that they are planning to do and we've got,
we've got to be careful to it. But I I think we should be again
optimistic about mainstream media's demise.
I think it will. It is imminent and it will be a
good thing. I can't leave without talking
about air quality itself and and a bit I mean one of the points
that's made in the paper is that of course the the the air
quality debate isn't based on science and and so I mean
whenever Sadiq Khan is is claiming that he needs an ultra
low emission zone because air quality is is bad in in London
and 4000 people are dying a year and so on.
I mean what what? What is the scientific evidence
on his correctness or incorrectness on that?
There is no science of it, first of all, right, so there isn't
there. There was an attempt to estimate
the mortality risk of air pollution exposure and and that
is based on a broader number of studies and it's quite simple.
You you you sort of try to estimate a population's level of
exposure and then you look at how long they're living and then
you you try to to to work out what the influence of of those
air pollutants specifically PM 2.5 which is the smallest
particles of soot and the such like in in air and stuff like
nitrogen, the the noxes and soxes nitrogen dioxides and
nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides.
So they try to build these statistical models of of of of
that exposure risk and now as use they may well be useful in
certain contexts and and I'm not against like you know I think
it's probably better that we we, we we don't have open coal fires
in in a place like London. I think that you know so but I
don't I don't I, I we're talking about something categorically
different when we're now when we're talking about banning
anything we're essentially talking about banning combustion
full stop of any form. So the the, the the the the
government had convened in the 2000s or you know sort of met
occasionally a panel of experts called committee on the medical
effects of air pollutants. It's called Comia and and that
sort of brought these sort of researchers and scientists
together with a couple of lay people interestingly enough
again from 1A representative from the Green Alliance that
BLOB organization I've discussed quite a bit and they discuss how
what what what how can we work out what what what is the
mortality risk and they they they try every few years to sort
of synthesize the science that that that's available.
So in the the, the, the one of them, the sort of key events
that is a report they produced in 2018 where sort of more more
definitive effort to estimate mortality risk of of of all the
potents that people are exposed to and they and they produce
this model. But but a lot of the scientists
on the panel or a number of the scientists on the panel, it's
not a huge panel. They disagree and they say this
is not a Safeway of informing policy.
There is no mortality risk associated with air pollution
exposure. And we know that because people
are living longer lives, right. So you know, it's misleading to
say that someone dies the cause of air pollute exposure to air
pollution. Now it might be that you live
slightly longer if you're exposed to slightly or much less
air pollution, but this is, this is these these effects are
extremely weak statistically. So as as we point out in the
earlier report, life expectancy has been growing through most of
the 20th century and into the 21st century pretty linear
linearly at a rate of 72 days per person per year.
So you know, you're like, this is life expectancy increasing at
this quite phenomenal rate, certainly a historically
unprecedented development. So people were where they were
sort of at the middle of the last century, dying towards the
end of their 60s. Now they're living into their
80s as an average as an expected norm.
So this and that's that's great that we we we want this but the
the, the so the worst you can say about exposure to air
pollution according to these models is that that 72 days per
year increase is slowed down by 64 or so hours a year, right.
So you essentially let's say you gain 72 days a year through
whatever is driving normal material progress that that kind
of stuff and then you lose 60. So so 100 steps forward, one
steps back, right that that's how to think of this and so so
it's and that's why it's misleading to say it causes
death or it causes premature death because it doesn't it just
slightly air pollution exposure slightly slows the rate of
increase of life expectancy. So so so this debate happens
within Commie app and and and and a couple of the scientists
say we're not putting our name to this because this is this is
misleading and it's going to distort the public's
understanding of of of air pollution and and they say this
in 2018 and and Sadiq Khan has proven them right because Sadiq
Khan. Sadiq Khan you know and I hate
you know we've got a worse repeat the point I'm not
claiming A denying A denier's position for example that I
might be some people might sort of characterise my views on
climate change. I'm stating the science here
literally. The published government
official science, it's saying do not use mortality as a statement
of of of the risk of air pollution.
But but they, you know the likes of Sadiq Khan, just just just
just ignore that that warning, that advice from science itself
and I would say scientific institutions, research
organisations such as those that are based at Imperial College
are complicit. And even the chair of Commi App
itself has been complicit in allowing, as it were, Sadiq Khan
to get away with that. And and and I'm I'm not
suggesting that that's just because they've been bought,
although we can see extremely large amounts of money flowing
between City Hall in London, the mayor's office and the NGOs and
and philanthropists involved with air pollution campaigning.
But but you know might the the the whole thing might be more
complex than just about funding but there's definitely ideology
interfering with institutional sciences contributions to our
understanding. And even after having produced
such a clear statement as as as as Comiak did, it's chair is
going around supporting the mayor in his very alarmist
propagandist kind of interventions.
You know, trying to you know this this policy making so, so
this and that and that's just to wrap that up.
I guess that's how we can know that climate change is BS as
well because air pollution as I've said before is a microcosm
is a proxy battle of the climate debate.
And and if we can see such liberties being taken by
institutional science and by scientists at in this, in this
in this field in the field of air pollution, we can definitely
see that replicated throughout the other debates about about
about climate change. So that's that's what we try and
do in the report. We try and say air pollution is
the microcosm of of the the broader climate and green agenda
and we and we can see these same things happening.
Brilliant, Ben. We have to leave it there for
today. I hope we can do this again in
the future. In the meantime, how do people
get a copy of the report and how do they see your other work?
Yeah, you can get the report at the Together Association
website. If you'll forgive me if I've
forgotten the URL, but it's quite easy to find.
You can find it on Twitter as well We're we're tweeting it
every day at the moment. So so the you can also find me
on Twitter. Climate debate Sorry Climate
resistance Clim #8 resistance. My website isclimatedebate.co.uk
Ross Got YouTube channel but all those are linked to on on
Twitter and on the website. But yeah, should be should be
easy to find the report either by my name or by the together
association with the word report if you will do a web search.
Brilliant. Thank you very much.
Ben Pyle, thank you for joining me today.
And as I say, hopefully we will see you in the not too distant
future. Thank you very much.
Bye, bye for now.